Does the collection include “attributed” quotations?
Yes, but we use the term “attributed” in a different way from most. There are some quotations for which there is general scholarly agreement that the quotation is authentically attributed to a certain person. However, no one ever seems to have ever stated the primary or even a secondary source. At the same time, there are many bogus quotations in the literature and especially on the web. So the singular fact that a quotation appears in someone’s web collection, was not sufficient for us to include the quotation. So we reserve the citation “attributed” for those quotations which have been in the literature for a long time, and those which appear in many contemporary sources, not including those who just “scrape” quotations from other web sites. If there are different citations, a primary source is the best. Secondary sources are next best and these vary depending on the particular source. The New York Times, for example, has proven to be very reliable over time; many others, not so. The
